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On 26 June 2006, the embattled prime minister of East Timor, Mari
Alkatiri, announced his resignation amid the worst crisis the world's
second-youngest nation-state has faced since it became independent on
20 May 2002. The unrest had led to the deaths of thirty-eight people
and created nearly 100,000 internal refugees.

The day of Alkatiri's resignation – which happened to be the morrow of
the independence day of Mozambique, the Lusophone country where the
former leader had spent twenty-four years in exile – frenetic
negotiations began for the choice of a new prime minister. On 8 July,
after two weeks of intensive negotiations, the choice of Josè Ramos
Horta – the country's long-term foreign minister and (since the first
week of June 2006) defence minister – assumed his third senior role as
head of government of the troubled nation.

His nomination was widely welcomed by East Timor's most influential
institutions such as the Catholic Church (including senior bishops),
President Xanana Gusmao (who is reported to have insisted on his
appointment), and members of the leading Frente Revolucionária de
Timor-Leste Independente (Fretilin) party. The international political
and media reaction was also positive, reflecting relief at the apparent
easing of the crisis and respect for Ramos Horta's long-standing role
as (along with President Xanana Gusmao) a figurehead of East Timor's
long campaign for independence during the twenty-seven years of
Indonesian occupation.

At the same time, expectations of a rapid end to the problems of East
Timor (Timor-Leste in Portuguese, Timor Lorosa'e in the main indigenous
language, Tetum) may turn out to be misplaced – for many challenges lie
ahead in the short and long term.

Loro Horta earned degrees at Sydney University and Nanyang
Technological University, Singapore. He worked in Mozambique for
several years, and served as an advisor to East Timor's defence
department. He is the son of East Timor's former foreign minister and
current prime minister, José Ramos Horta. The views expressed in his
openDemocracy articles are his own.

The changing of the guard

There is no doubt that Josè Ramos Horta is a far more consensual figure
than Mari Alkatiri. But the former prime minister remains Fretilin's
secretary-general, and will continue to exert influence over the
largest and best-organised party in East Timor.

Moreover, Fretilin dominates the current caretaker government which
Ramos Horta now heads, and will continue to serve until fresh elections
scheduled for April or May 2006. Two Fretilin members are deputy prime
ministers, and took the oath of office beside Ramos Horta when he was
installed on 9 July; one of them (Estanislao da Silva, minister for
agriculture) is a close Alkatiri ally and someone who in the past has
criticised Ramos Horta very harshly.

Meanwhile, Ramos Horta faces a difficult choice in relation to the 2007
elections. Will he stand for election, and under what circumstances –
by returning to the Fretilin party he and Gusmao resigned from (as many
of its members want) or alongside Gusmao in a new party? It is likely
that Alkatiri, who recovered some of its lost popularity by resigning
and thus helping contain the burgeoning unrest, will dedicate his own
efforts to the party and to its success in the elections.

Mari Alkatiri is a complex figure whose combination of remarkable
organisational skills, insensitivity, patriotic zeal and consistency of
character have earned him great reserves of both loyalty and enmity.
His political abilities are unquestioned: in the 2005 regional
elections, Fretilin annihilated East Timor's incompetent opposition by
winning in all but one of the thirty-two regions. As long as Alkatiri
remains in control of Fretilin he will remain a formidable force.

Thus, unless Ramos Horta returns to Fretilin or makes an effective
alliance with Xanana Gusmao (with the tacit support of the Catholic
Church), Alkatiri may again be able to mobilise Fretilin's
near-mythical powers to compensate for his flaws and win re-election.
In this event, East Timor may face a recurrence of crisis, perhaps one
of even greater proportions.

A way to avoid this outcome would be for Fretilin's central committee
to convene new elections for the party leadership by secret ballot,
rather than the controversial show of hands in which Alkatiri was
elected in May 2005. In such a case, the more moderate Josè Luis
Guterres may be able to replace Alkatiri as party leader.

Josè Luis Guterres is East Timor's successor to Ramos Horta as foreign
minister, a close friend of Xanana Gusmao and Ramos Horta himself who
also enjoys good relations with the Catholic Church. If Xanana and
Ramos Horta maintain their pledge to remain independent political
figures, Guterres may be the most promising candidate for the prime
ministership.

Such political calculations reflect how finely-balanced East Timor's
situation has become in the aftermath of a traumatic crisis. Alkatiri's
sustaining power was vividly illustrated on the day he resigned, when
10,000 of his supporters mobilised and marched on Dili. This was in the
face of large-scale intimidation of party members that had included the
burning of houses belonging to Fretilin central-committee members.

The party and the people

In this light, José Ramos Horta will have to ponder his next moves very
carefully. In the short term he will have to deal with the
disgruntlement of the dozens of groups that came together to oppose
Alkatiri. They range from rebel soldiers, disaffected police officers,
former pro-Indonesian militias, opportunistic politicians and organised
gangs.

Many of these groups, which claimed to be fighting for President
Gusmao, have their own dubious agendas. This was clearly demonstrated
on 7 June, when one rebel – Marcos Tilman – gave Gusmao fifteen days to
dissolve parliament and call new elections or "face the fury of the
Timorese people".

People like Tilman – and other candidates from among the petty warlords
– have the potential to cause further unrest. The majority of ordinary
soldiers who rebelled against Alkatiri may have been motivated by an
instinct to right perceived injustice, but their leaders – organised
under banners such as the "peace, unity and justice commissions" which
are reminiscent of warlord-led groups in Sierra Leone or Liberia –
often pursue less noble ambitions.

There is a further problem of missing firearms belonging to the
now-defunct Timorese national police. Around 4,000 weapons – many of
them high-calibre machine-guns such as M-16s – are still unaccounted
for, and could be in the hands of former militias and pro-Indonesian
forces who had been allowed to join East Timor's police force through a
combination of Xanana's well-intentioned strategy of national
reconciliation and poor planning by the United Nations.

The individuals who hold these weapons are trained and organised:
centrally-directed gangs rather than a bunch of thugs wandering around,
looting and burning. The commander of the Australian forces sent to
stabilise the situation stated that many of their attacks were not
random, but rather being coordinated through the former police radio
network. These groups may prove as much a danger to Xanana Gusmao and
Josè Ramos Horta as they were to Alkatiri.

All the problems of instability are shadowed by high levels of
unemployment in East Timor – perhaps 50% nationwide, and 80% in the
capital, Dili. Alongside the proliferation of firearms and the
widespread culture of organised gangs, this provides ready
opportunities for would-be leaders to exploit East Timor's troubled
situation.

The same groups that precipitated the crisis that led to Mari
Alkatiri's resignation could undermine the country's stability
regardless of who is prime minister. The 57- year-old Josè Ramos Horta,
Nobel peace prize winner and the nation's voice in the world for three
decades, will need all the help he can get to steer his collapsing
nation in the difficult times ahead.